The amount and variety of content that is available on television, on the Internet, and via other delivery mechanisms continues to grow. Not all content may be appropriate for all audiences. A user (e.g., parent) may be interested in controlling what content another user (e.g., child) is allowed to see. Additionally, a user (e,g., consumer) may be interested in controlling the content to which they expose themselves. For example, a user may have preferences concerning violence, sex, subject matter, language, or other issues. Conventionally, a user may have relied on ratings information that describes content to decide whether to view content. This ratings information may have been provided in an external guide (e.g., weekly television guide), in a first portion of a stream (e.g., first minute of a movie), on a label (e.g., DVD (digital video disk) cover), or in other locations. Conventional ratings may have attempted to account for some of these issues through industry standard designations (e.g., NC17, R, PG, G). However, conventional ratings based control may have been too coarsely grained and may have been based on a combination of factors that may not have guaranteed desired discretion. Therefore, a user may not have been able to insure that they or their child would not be exposed to undesirable content.
Conventional automated approaches to ratings based control may have employed V-Chip technology to analyze XDS (extended data services) ratings information. However; automated V-Chip approaches based on XDS ratings required the presence of a V-chip decoder in a receiving device or in some device in a reception stream. V-chip based control may have been inadequate because some reception devices, including televisions, smart phones, and other mobile devices may not have V-Chip decoders. V-chip refers to technology used in television receivers that allows blocking programs based on program ratings. V-chip technology may be based on the vertical blanking interval in the television signal. For example, V-Chip technology may rely on line 21 of a broadcast signal's vertical blanking interval. The vertical blanking interval can be used to transmit a code in the broadcast signal. The code may provide a score that may be compared to a ranking in a numerical rating system that considers, sex, violence, language, and other attributes. If the received content is outside the level configured by the user, then the content may be blocked. If the received content is inside the level configured by the user, then the content may be received. One example numerical rating system is the XDS protocol. The XDS protocol is codified in Electronic Industries Alliance standard CEA-608-E. The XDS protocol involves providing ancillary data (e.g., metadata) contemporaneously with content (e.g., analog television, NTSC (National Television System Committee) video signal).
Traditional ratings based control solutions may have relied on ratings information provided in an electronic program guide and may have relied on content being delivered at the advertised time on the advertised channel or from an expected source. A time based system may have required adequate time synchronization between a content provider and a content receiver. Time synchronization may have been required so that when ratings information changes on program boundaries the content receiver will honor the ratings change instantly. Programming guide, time and channel based systems may have been subverted or simply frustrated when the time on a display device did not match the time of a providing device. Schedule changes and start/stop changes due, for example, to one program running long or short, may also have frustrated these approaches. A live program that ran over time and spilled over into an “allowed” time period may have exposed a viewer to undesired content. Some traditional approaches attempted to account for these time based frustrations using an event information table (EIT). However, some content may not have had an EIT available, and even if the EIT was available, clock drift or other time alignment issues may have frustrated these approaches. Other time alignment issues may be present in network DVR (digital video recorder) or other time-shifting scenarios where the consumer time does not match against provider time.